More than 500 individuals from 170 Chicago offices joined in the city-wide competition, with participants earning points by completing activities to improve sustainability both in the workplace and at home. Several members of the Thornton Tomasetti Chicago office participated in the challenge, and the team earned 8,675 points in total.

As a result of their efforts, the Thornton Tomasetti team received a Gold Level Achievement Award, as well as the Greener Purchasing Policy Leader Award. The recognitions were presented to the team at the Green Office Challenge Awards Reception, held on June 10.

Key Points

• The Gold Level Achievement Award was bestowed to the top third of participants in the challenge.

• The Greener Purchasing Policy Leader Award was presented to Thornton Tomasetti by Office Depot. The Office Depot team read through all purchasing policies submitted for the challenge, and selected Thornton Tomasetti as the best written to quantify sustainable efforts.

• The actual Greener Purchasing Policy Leader award is made of scrap wood materials from the Rebuilding Exchange, a non-profit social enterprise that creates products from reclaimed building materials.

• In total, the city’s participants completed over 2,850 activities to improve office sustainability, ranging from retrofitting lighting and water fixtures to redesigning office recycling programs. Their efforts yield annual savings of 690,000 kWh and 705,000 gallons of water, while reducing 71 tons of waste.

• The competition was originally launched in 2008 and has served as a model for more than a dozen similar sustainability competitions across the country. The next and fifth round of the Chicago Green Office Challenge begins in September.

• The efforts of the Thornton Tomasetti Chicago location are part of the company’s long-term commitment to sustainability across all its offices.

About Thornton Tomasetti (www.ThorntonTomasetti.com)
Thornton Tomasetti provides engineering design, investigation and analysis services to clients worldwide on projects of every size and level of complexity. We fulfill the needs of our clients at every stage in the building life cycle through seven integrated practices in Structural Engineering, Façade Engineering, Forensics, Renewal, Construction Engineering, Property Loss Consulting and Sustainability. Founded in 1956, today Thornton Tomasetti is an 850-person organization of engineering, architecture, sustainability and support professionals collaborating from offices across the United States and in Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.